Will there be no more updates to ProFire series?

I would like to know what is the reason why M-Audio decided that there would be more support for Profire and the following versions of the operating system of apple.
We are many users who have this problem and we feel abandoned because neither Apple nor M-Audio give us a solution.
In order to work, we need to solve the problems of the programs we occupy, since the new versions of programs are only compatible for the new operating systems, and we can not install them because there is no compatibility of our M-Audio product for the new OS X.

I know this sucks. We announced two years ago that the drivers for the ProFire series were no longer going to be updated and the product was going to be discontinued. Hence the topic of the post. Why? We here on the support team can only speculate. If I were to guess, it's because FireWire is dead and very few resources were inherited after the transfer from AVID.

I fully understand your frustration, but as a user of FireWire you must know that it's a dying medium and has been for almost 10 years. Windows 10 doesn't support it natively and I'm sure you all know that the last few Mac series have not included support either. To continue updating FireWire devices at this stage in the game is difficult and limiting.

As a fellow FireWire interface owner, I felt stuck long before companies stopped updating the products. But in the end, why would I update if all of my equipment works perfectly as is? I've heard all the reasons for updating to Sierra (mostly security), and I promise you this is not necessary, though I do understand the appeal of Sierra since appears to be very solid.

In this studio/audio production industry the ultimate goal is to have products supported forever and we're certainly getting there with newer interfaces designed around native class-compliant drivers built into PC and Mac operating systems. Apple and Windows seem to be more aware of the need for consistency as well. But, the FireWire series devices are older and were designed around the need for specific drivers. Those drivers cannot possibly be updated forever, especially considering that they were initially designed by AVID.

Anyway, all we can recommend here is to continue using the device on a supported OS. I promise you that for every person posting here on the forum, there is someone out there happily using their ProFire on Yosemite. But in the end, it's understandable if you need to find an alternative for your given situation.

Firewire being "dead" is a useless excuse. At least open source the drivers and let the community take over. There are tons of threads out there about this. Clearly there are a great deal of users of this hardware out there. My Mac that has Firewire is still supported by Apple and likely will be for at least another few years. If Apple hasn't totally killed off support for it, it doesn't seem you guys should either. Please at the very least open source the drivers. This is ridiculous.

It's a natural thing that OS versions get updated and I think it's very bad customer service by not providing driver updates. Sticking to an old version is not a solution, it might be temporary one but will give other issues. Is this your way of having customers buy new products? By not supporting existing products anymore?

Stef, I do agree to a degree but they're right, they did mention this years ago it was no longer supported. I've had to purchase another device from Focusrite to keep working. The Profire is an awesome card, however due to me also doing graphics design I did need to update my OS and it meant I had to jump to another company.

Make the drivers OpenSource!!! Come on!!! This is nuts to treat MAudio customers this way. I don't care who owned the company when i purchased the hardware! Support your product - quit making excuses for poor service!

So after losing complete functionality I went to the attic and pulled out my 14 year old MOTU 828 mk1, downloaded a driver, and hey presto back in business on Sierra. I wouldn't mind but it SOUNDS BETTER! Bye bye MAudio, never again.

I surmise all they have to do is conform to whatever driver standards Apple changed in the new OS, which should absolutely not be a huge undertaking. I have requested that they open source the drivers so they don't completely kill the hardware and someone like myself as a software developer could go get this thing working. They haven't responded to that.

It's a natural thing that OS versions get updated and I think it's very bad customer service by not providing driver updates. Sticking to an old version is not a solution, it might be temporary one but will give other issues. Is this your way of having customers buy new products? By not supporting existing products anymore?

it s a pity - all attempts to get it to run end with a kernel panic,
is it really that hard for m audio to let someone who is anyway doing drivers for os x sierra, compile and link the profire drivers again?
Old sources are there, can't be that big task.

I know this sucks. We announced two years ago that the drivers for the ProFire series were no longer going to be updated and the product was going to be discontinued. Hence the topic of the post. Why? We here on the support team can only speculate. If I were to guess, it's because FireWire is dead and very few resources were inherited after the transfer from AVID.

I fully understand your frustration, but as a user of FireWire you must know that it's a dying medium and has been for almost 10 years. Windows 10 doesn't support it natively and I'm sure you all know that the last few Mac series have not included support either. To continue updating FireWire devices at this stage in the game is difficult and limiting.

As a fellow FireWire interface owner, I felt stuck long before companies stopped updating the products. But in the end, why would I update if all of my equipment works perfectly as is? I've heard all the reasons for updating to Sierra (mostly security), and I promise you this is not necessary, though I do understand the appeal of Sierra since appears to be very solid.

In this studio/audio production industry the ultimate goal is to have products supported forever and we're certainly getting there with newer interfaces designed around native class-compliant drivers built into PC and Mac operating systems. Apple and Windows seem to be more aware of the need for consistency as well. But, the FireWire series devices are older and were designed around the need for specific drivers. Those drivers cannot possibly be updated forever, especially considering that they were initially designed by AVID.

Anyway, all we can recommend here is to continue using the device on a supported OS. I promise you that for every person posting here on the forum, there is someone out there happily using their ProFire on Yosemite. But in the end, it's understandable if you need to find an alternative for your given situation.

Yea get your head out of the clouds. The hardware isnt that old. Maudio is just being lazy and forcing people to upgrade to the latest greatest when the old gear works just fine. Its a power grab just like Avid did. monkey see monkey do.

"it's because Firewire is dead and very few resources were inherited after the transfer from AVID. "
A) You are wrong, as long as we use firewire it's not dead.
B) Not our problem what you got from Avid

You fully , don't understand. Your customers are asking for help and you are giving a bullshit answer.

Very pathetic and you are gonna not do anything about it. Or will you? Your call!

I have purchased companies in the past. I purchased the assets and liabilities. Those liabilities included "supporting products." If you are not going to support them, please make the drivers OpenSource!

Firewire is not dead! I have a lot of it my studio. I have adapters from Apple.

Your competitors like motu or focusrite are able to support os x sierra for similar old devices...
Dunno what you, m audio spends for public relation, but i can guess how much it is to continue driver support...

Thats very bad customer support and saving on the wrong side. People who used your audio devices don't throw them after 2years like people do with mobiles. That sucks and i don't know how many 100 000 $ it will take to wash away a bad image like that in a (relative) small community of audio device users and sellers.

Thanks for the reply, it gives a clear picture of the situation. Appreciate the clarity you provided. On the other hand, it is a very customer unfriendly. It would have been fair that I got the information when I bought it a few years back: please buy this product, by the way it may not be supported in a few years from now. I would not have bought it. Neither Will buy again.

I understand everyone is upset about this, I was too. When I bought the device locally it cost me $1100. But, they did advise years ago it was no longer supported and advised the current driver would be their last. I had to go to Focusrite for a device I could work on. I also do graphics design and needed to upgrade my OS so is the reason I switched.

It's a shame, the quality was great but I just can't spend more money on M-Audio if it won't be supported. I need to get myself a midi keyboard and unfortunately I can't bring myself to buy M-Audio in case it's no longer supported next year etc.

As I said, I understand the frustration. We were warned but it still sucks.

I have the same problem. As i see there are many good producers of audio interfaces. I think to buy FOCUSRITE Scarlett 2i4 2nd Gen. So i will never buy M-Audio devices. I've just added to the facebook group of hate.

That really makes me mad to think that I have to buy another audio interface just because M-Audio doesn't maintain drivers for it's own devices. It's not as if the Profire 610 was 20 years old !!

What M-Audio should do as a minimum, to respect their customers, is to open source the drivers. There's no big secret hidden in a driver. So if they don't want to spend energy on making their device compatible with new OS, they should open source it, so that others can try and do it !!

If I cannot find a quick solution, I'll have to buy another device. and guess what ? It won't be a M-Audio.
More : I will even spend some time to tell the story on several online stores so that everybody knows how they will be treated in the future if they buy from M-Audio...

I agree with Jeremie. M-Audio should make the drivers open source. I am a software developer and there are a lot of other developers in my network. I am sure we can make this work, if M-Audio just gives us the tools!

If they would do that, I would reconsider my current thoughts on M-Audio: "Never buy anything from them again. Ever."

Firewire being "dead" is a useless excuse. At least open source the drivers and let the community take over. There are tons of threads out there about this. Clearly there are a great deal of users of this hardware out there. My Mac that has Firewire is still supported by Apple and likely will be for at least another few years. If Apple hasn't totally killed off support for it, it doesn't seem you guys should either. Please at the very least open source the drivers. This is ridiculous.

Soo basically when we upgrade our OS.. we will have to Throw away the M-audio interface???..WTF.. this is ridiculous.. usual case would be newer interface not supporting the OS. but this is the other way :-(

This is fundamentally not good enough. Don't give us that glib "I know this sucks" rubbish; "sucks" does not cover the £340 I spent for this piece of hardware that you cannot be bothered to support.

The people commenting here have not bought a new computer. They've not torn out their firewire input port. They have merely opted to upgrade their pre-existing machine with a newer version of the operating system. The fact that your expensive products have a very definite shelf life is abhorrent. The fact that you have not open-sourced is ludicrous. I will take every single opportunity I am ever given to convince people not to buy your products. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

very disappointed about M-audio... in the end, you know it sucks and still you suggest as solution buying another of your products which maybe in a pair of years will be obsolete as well.
so, you rather make thousands of hardware useless and send us to roll back operating system instead of making some changes on a file and make customers happy again. what a shame...

Never again shall get products M-Audio! Never nobody will advise the purchase of M-Audio hardware! What is difficult to compile drivers for the updated OS ?! Due to the driver (your lazy programmers) to change the equipment? You have gone scrip? Horrible attitude towards customers! You have lost credibility.

Yeah the whole "Firewire" isn't a thing anymore excuse is BS. Firewire will totally still work with adapters. And M-Audio is essentially creating a boatload of electronic waste by killing off this hardware via its refusal to either support the new OS or open source the drivers. Zero care given to it's customers or the environment.

"Do not upgrade your OS" sounds like a trolling because of no possibility to use old OS - one simple reason: web browsers drop supporting old OS'es (i can't use Firefox,Safari, Chrome with Mac OS X 10.7 anymore because of dropped support, they become broken by viruses, browser plugins stop work and so on)

Spread the word fellas 2017 M-Audio will go down.. i am personally refraining from buying any products from M-Audio. Spread the message via all Social Media. otherwise these people will never give a shit about any thing.

I'm disappointed to see this stance be taken, but I do understand that M-audio is not the only one in the market to have discontinued firewire device support (e.g. Presonus FireBox). Unlikely to buy any thunderbolt device... it has the same odour of "short life" technology to it as firewire had all along...

absolutely disgraced toward the decision that M-Audio, have given us, (its invested customers.) Get real... when we decide to save up a tonne of cash to go out and purchase one of your high end, expensive products... its safe to say that the vast majority of people DO NOT all go searching around on a website for some fine print that effectively says, your investments of hundreds of dollars will only be good for 2 years from the point of purchase. Its really just not a good enough excuse to hear from a company this size and that has always been this trusted in hitting the needs of its committed customer base. Do the update guys, make it right. Theres a bunch of us with very overpriced paper weights on our desks right now.

Really upset by this. My profires (yes I own two!!!!) are the bread and butter of my home studio. I need this update. Now that their value is going to drop considerably I will probably have to sell both to buy one used interface and cut my inputs in half. This is not ok guys. Make the update!

I think this is genuinely a very bad decision from M-Audio side, in today's world many companies try to be pro-client oriented also at some expense because they can see the long term benefits. To me the behaviour of M-Audio seems quite foolish, but so be it. There are still other companies to go to and forget about the one that doesn't listen to it's customers.

BTW, as was already posted here, if M-Audio doesn't want to spend resources updating the drivers, at least open source them. That shouldn't be a problem and it will prove something. Otherwise I think the "image" about the company is quite clear.

(I'm also a Profire 610 owner probably moving to Focusrite or Presonus after this experience and I will never recommend M-Audio to anybody)

They can't open source the drivers. The firewire chips in both the ProFire series (DICE-II ) and Firewire series (BridgeCo) are not M-Audio design, which means they don't have the rights to open source the driver code for them.

They basically just skin the control panel from the firewire manufacturers DDK. At the end of the day, the parts that make it work with an OS are from the firewire chipset manufacturer, which is part of their DDK that they only release to "partners". I've already talked to both TC Applied Technologies (BridgeCo) and Archwave (DICE-II) about this back when I as a Moderator for the old M-Audio forums.

Same here, not buying M-Audio hardware in the future.
My Macs still run Sierra just fine, but my ProFire 610 and 2626 both no longer work in Sierra. Anyone has some advice for a company with good support that sells sound interfaces similar to the 610 and 2626?

I using the Profire and Delta 66 in a Asus X99 Deluxe II with zero issues in Windows 10. Yes i disagree with the ZERO support for new drivers however, I have been using my devices for 9 yrs and the newer technologies are staggering in performance compared to these.

"it's because Firewire is dead and very few resources were inherited after the transfer from AVID. "
A) You are wrong, as long as we use firewire it's not dead.
B) Not our problem what you got from Avid

You fully , don't understand. Your customers are asking for help and you are giving a bullshit answer.

Very pathetic and you are gonna not do anything about it. Or will you? Your call!

guyss no point commenting on this forum. we all should get this message to public. for example facebook is a strong social media. im gonna post this issue on many forums on fb as much as i can. atleast thats all we can do right now. if each of you do the same. a great impact can be made. m-audio is bullshit. burrn buurn

I think there is no point in 'hating', if the company was bought by somebody who's priorities don't include spending resources on supporting the bought company's 'legacy' hardware (which is what I believe most companies wouldn't want to do). It's important to find out 'who is behind the steering wheel' and address that company directly and not by hating on the forums.